Copyright Aid

Hi Helen, I can understand the problem of funding legal advice. The cost can soon mount up! Taking your second question first, you may indeed pursue both defendants, since they have both in their own way deprived you of income to which you are entitled. However I am not entirely clear about your pre...

Hi Helen First of all your last posting got inserted twice so I've deleted the second one, I hope that's OK with you. And, yes, I think you have the legal situation pretty well correct, as I see it based on what you have told us. Just one correction. You said "the company who received the image...

Hi Helen, From what you have said here, it sounds as if the contractor may be liable for primary infringement for copying and supplying the images ( section 17 ) and the company is liable for secondary infringement in possessing and distributing the unlicensed images in the course of business ( sect...

Hi budgie, The answer is yes, the composer's estate does have to agree to the sync rights, but the key to the puzzle will/ought to lie in the wording of the exclusive licence the composer granted to the record company. As I read your explanation the composer was the producer of the recording and thi...

Hi Jon, Taking someone else's code and incorporating it into your own code could be infringement by copying provided that the amount copied was 'substantial' and was itself 'original'. Those two words are in inverted commas because they have a special meaning within this context. Substantial means t...

Hi Habbers,

The existence of the image on their site and the watermark are relatively conclusive on the copyright ownership issue. So as long as you have information about their normal licence fee, you should be able make a counter offer, if you wish.

Yes, script would count as software for copyright purposes, as does HTML, XML etc.

Hi Jon, Thanks for the detailed explanation. Just to be clear on my part: 'software' in the copyright context is synonymous with 'executable code'. It does not include arrays, data tables (which would be classed as databases) or data/object files such .wav, .mpeg or jpeg etc. A compiler/decompiler i...

Hi again Jon, Provided that the admins and moderators of the site do not pre-moderate* postings on the forum, they will not be liable for any copyright infringement perpetrated by a user. This is on the proviso that once the site admin is informed of the alleged infringement, they remove the item 'e...

Hi scruffy, Quite a bit to unpick here. As you are probably aware, software is treated as if it was a work of literature when it comes to copyright protection. In the modern age this is clearly nonsense, but it goes back to a time when all the instructions in a program were typed out manually so the...

Hi Dave, First all I don't think you need to worry about whether the promoter and or the concert was in the UK or USA. The law is largely the same in both jurisdictions, except that the US doesn't have the typographical layout provision I mentioned previously, and the fair use doctrine in the USA wo...

Hi artemisclark, Assuming that you produce the designs yourself or have permission to use someone else's work, this should be OK. However be careful to base your designs on a number of source materials, as copying a single photograph, for instance, would infringe the copyright of the photographer. T...

Hi Dave Practically speaking I don't think you need to worry about copyright here. As you indicate, the tickets are not literary works because the information printed on them is entirely factual; since they do not appear to have any artistic content they would not qualify as arttistic works. At most...

Hi Jon, The dates have no real significance. There is no legal requirement to provide a copyright notice, but doing so at least reminds anyone who encounters your software that copyright exists and it may deter some people from infringing your copyright. Where a copyright notice is displayed, you ha...

Hi Jon, Whether or not your site itself was or is for commercial purposes, (ie offering content which needs to be paid for) is less relevent than the purpose of the illustration. You mentioned previously that the image was used as a filler and in fact any similar image would have done just as well. ...